Beaver Blues

  Dead Native Engineer.  

  At the Museum site the snake is consistant.  Always on his root ball.  I'm not for a second thinking that there is one snake per 500 yards of creekbottom...I'm missing snakes like mad.  That makes me a little nervous.  Perfect habitat for snakeanity.  Ought to be some monsters rolled up in the sun somewhere close.

  Too close.

  Nothing in the minnow trap except a dead minnow and a hunk of rotten venison.  I guess this minnow didn't stay in school.

  Nothing on the game cam except me and two other squirrels.  I baited it with corn.  Coon riot night tonight!

  Nice rain a few nights ago and the sandbars all boogied around.  My TJC plastic yardstick washed downstream but I retrieved it.  The beaver dam looked un-serviced and the traps are gone.  I was betting the trapper killed a couple of native engineers when I walked up on the body of one concealed under some leaves in the woods.  This is going to be stanky for a month.  Not good.  When I'm out here pursuing my artistic vision I don't want to be gassed by 50 lbs of decomposing aquatic mammal.  Maybe I ought to use him as a turtle lure instead of the trap and venison.  That would be the zen approach.  He's already past the organ harvest stage.

  If this is the CHIEF engineer, Lake Robert is history.

  I hope he had a Christian burial, though this looks more like a murder disposal.

  If I can chance upon a dead beaver, why aren't I seeing the snakes?